“We’ve no need of peace to be brought to us,” my aunt replied, “as we have it in abundance.” She raised her arms briefly to indicate the ravine. A few birds nested atop the bastion screeched, just to annoy her, I’m sure.
The peregrinator sighed; his ash-roc plume bent sorrowfully. He switched to Proclamation Cant. “Yours is a hollow peace, of hiding away. You must help bring this...” he waved his hand at the quietude (now disturbed by the muttering of translation) around us, “to the lands of your liege.”
Who hides from the Furnace? I wondered. My aunt’s eyes narrowed, her Frond curling protectively around her shoulders. “Tell us your meaning.” I looked at his profile more intently; his gaze did not waver. It was too cool, too well-prepared.
“By order of the Nine Shining Diadems, alight with the gratitude of the people of the Germane Lands, warmed by the blessed fury of the Aurulent Furnace, you will grant them your thirty fittest for the augmentation of the realm in the south, where once again we are called to extend the benevolence of the Nine Kings to those who dwell in ignorance of their endless bounty and profound guidance.”
I rolled my eyes at the ground as I crouched there, panting. I had heard a speech like this once before, as had my twelfth cousin. She had left with ten of our kin on a kings’ errand and was the only one to return. I looked sideways towards her and saw even through her hood the clenching of her jaw. Mine did the same in solidarity. The pinion shivered, just for a few heartbeats, in my hand.
My aunt shook her head, touched her left hand to her chin. “This is not part of the accord, peregrinator. ‘A spider’s feet and clutching jaws’ is the agreement.”
That cutting smile again. “That was under Six Kings. Nine Kings demand far more of their subjects.”
The silence was now disturbed by hubbub and some muttered invective in our own tongue, harsh enough that the whisks and pebblesmugs underfoot fled from the crowd, trying to avoid unintended dissolution. My aunt spoke over the noise. “We have not been given these new terms....”
“I give them to you now,” he said. “The threat is greater than before, and requires more of you who lounge in the protective embrace of the Nine Kings.” I stifled another moan, and a curse as well. No one lounges in the gaze of the sun, except those who refute it. The Furnace seemed to glare down more vivaciously upon my back, emblazoning it with more passion that it, or I, could endure. I bent lower and hissed my moan into the calescent dirt.
“This is not how these things are done,” my aunt replied. “We are allies, not subjects. Not kin.”
The peregrinator looked up at the sky. “Those terms have changed as well.” He unfurled his great cloak of feathers. “I have come to ensure that you will grant your lieges their due.” The feathers quivered all along his garment. “I will do what I must to see that you consent, or extract another greater cost for your refusal.” At that, I moaned, as my softness could not bear the caress of the Furnace much longer.
The murmurs rose, and my aunt let them decry our guest. My cousin folded her arms and shook her sleeves a bit. The action was not lost on the peregrinator, who let his cloak fall and raised his needle towards her. “You will find honoring this new arrangement less burdensome than the alternative.”
“And what is this new arrangement?” my aunt said, her sleeves shaking a bit for a different reason. “That you come when you wish and take our hunters, our long-walkers, our pathfinders, our sisters and uncles, with no promise of anything in return other than your wrath if we refuse?”
“Yes,” he said. “That is the way of things now.” He was perfectly still now, proudly unaffected by the intensifying scorch from above.
At those words several people broke from the crowd and advanced on him. Yes, I know, a terrible breach of etiquette. He ruffled his cloak and a flurry of feathers burst from it, flying towards them. The feathers cut them like blades, slicing through tunics and tahori to rip open arms and legs and cheeks, and the screaming of eagles came from their mouths, and they clawed at their wounds and tore them open further in agony. Others came forward to help them, to stop them from injuring themselves further. With another flick of his cloak the peregrinator sent a cloud of down at them. It stuck to their clothes, and then their raiment frayed, and when the down touched skin it turned dry, and then red, and then cracked. Quickly the square filled with howls of pain and anger. I let out one of my own in chorus with my kin and neighbors.
My cousin leapt forward. Her adzebill gutter appeared in one hand, her steel talon in the other. The peregrinator waited until she was a few steps away, and flicked his needle across her eyes, drawing a line of blood out of her hood as it exited. She stumbled; he moved to the side and tripped her as she went by. She swung up with her talon as she fell, and she sheared a thick clump of feathers from his cloak, but they popped like knots in firewood and shot sparks that burned into her clothes. A poke to the back of her knee with his needle buckled it as she tried to right herself. She crashed to the ground; blood dripped from her hood as she tried to raise her head and the smell of sizzled skin wafted from under her ruined garments.
My aunt had not moved, but her face was scarlet with anger and sorrow, like a ravine-wall at highsun. Her frond was fully extended over her and quivered. “You... you would strike us down and kill us like bothersome, oathless wasps?”
The peregrinator frowned, most insincerely. “Kill you? No, elder one. My hand cannot end a life; that is, and must always be, part of the agreement.” He gestured at the people on the ground, whom the rest of the village stared at with wide eyes as they whispered entreaties for protection. “I just... take what protections you feel entitled to, give you fair trade for what you try to give me, for breaking your own oaths to the Kings.” His feathers ruffled as if in a strong wind. “You dwell here in peace, unmolested, by their leave. If you wish that to remain so, give them what they ask.”
“And Kes?”
The peregrinator looked at me. I was now parched and red, the rich brown of my skin broiled crimson by the unforgiving Furnace above. I could feel the dizziness brought on by its growing intemperance, as it strove to strip away my mortality to reveal the truth that only radiance can discover. My limbs and my senses betrayed me, allured by the Furnace’s love. I felt light and dazzled by its ministrations. The feather felt heavy in my hand, its calamus bonded to my fingers.
The feather.
“The child is in the grip of the Furnace,” he said, looking at me with scorn. “and is being judged for your actions.”
I realized that he was right; I could not move my legs. I shook and felt my throat turning into a gritty maw. I looked about, even though I could barely see. My kin and neighbors stood immobile too, watching all of the suffering before them. Had the peregrinator brought this, or had we drawn it to us?
I spoke an oath under my dusty breath, one of the first we took when we came here from gentler lands. The harshness of the Waste was its temptation. We came to be judged by the Furnace, and by those already here, the creatures and plants, the spirits of dust and scirocco and shadow. We took leave of the verdant and plentiful realms far away, so bound to duty and servitude. We flew like birds from fat predators to find a fairer sovereign. Here, we found the oath and the curse to be more honest than the bent knee or the levy. Here there was no illusion; death was all about, exposed and immanent, inescapable. Here, where I stood, feeling as if at any moment I would turn to ash, as if all I was pressed through my skin to escape my form.
Was the peregrinator’s scorn justified?
I asked. Answers came from all around. I felt the weight of the curses we had laden, and the vitality our oaths had given. And I remembered stalking the cairnskill, clad only in a sage-leaf hood and sanctified mud. No promise or curse could touch it; some things resist both. It gave nothing, took what it could. But even it feared the sun’s love. I nodded.
I asked again, this time for a bequest, and felt a surge of life within me. I felt grief for those who gave it to me, from
dung beetles who thrived on our feces to a ravening drake whose wing we had healed long ago. If I had any moisture to spare, I would have cried. Even as I felt invigorated and rose, I was saddened. My limbs all thanked me, my eyes became small Furnaces, my other senses faded, jealous.
I raised the cairnskill feather, looked at the peregrinator through it. He became that shimmer again, indistinct but present. “Peregrinator,” I rasped, “the judgment falls to you now.”
When he smiled, I felt his fear vibrate through the feather. When I took a step towards him, he snapped his cloak open and a storm of pinions erupted from it, screaming towards me. I raised the cairnskill’s feather, and a sudden zephyr whirled about me, catching the pinions and pulling more from him. He tried to close his cloak, but the wind rose, and even as I felt my skin begin to crack I held on to the pinion, let my gaze flow through it, let it take from the peregrinator what my people could not. In a few breaths his cloak was a thin, bare swatch of skin. The wind died, and the feathers settled to the ground, already toasting in the full scorch of the Furnace.
With a squawk, he lunged at me with his needle. I grabbed it, smoke rising from my palm as I did, pulled him to me, and kneed him in the groin. He coughed and sank to the ground. The cloak was already beginning to shrivel, making his unworthiness obvious to the world. The sunlight flared brighter, I thought, eager to shower its love upon someone who had denied it for so long. He pulled his steaming cape over his small form and began to cackle.
My kin and neighbors came forward to their fallen loved ones, the feathers that had harmed them now as useless as the others. Some of my folk were already reddened by blood and the Furnace’s caress. But I knew none would perish; we had been granted that. The proper sacrifice had been given. My cousin was helped up by her children and borne into the coolness of her home. I turned my back on the chirping, shivering peregrinator and raised my face to the sky, looking at the Furnace through the cairnskill feather. And then, of course, I fell to the hot ground, but I was caught by swarming kinfolk, who held me up even as their hands smoldered, and I gave myself to the forging.
I am an oath sung in the shear of wings, whispered in the skitter of beetles, keened across rocks by the wind. I am the sound that sunlight makes when it enters an eye for the first time. I am one with everything that makes darkness flee and death step back in admiration. I have more love than the sun, and now it is jealous of me, yet sated and adoring too, eager for me to reflect its affection back to it, which may be all it ever wanted.
Copyright © 2012 John E. O. Stevens
Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website
John E. O. Stevens pens a weekly column for the SF Signal website on fantastic literature and its cultures. He has been published in Apex Magazine, Bull Spec, and Proxima: Dansk Science Fiction Tidsskrift and has a story forthcoming in Le Zaparogue. He labors as a bookseller in the wilds of upstate New York where he is currently working on two books (one fiction, one non-fiction), when he is not reading with his daughter or being a curmudgeon. You can find him lurking about his blog (http://jhstevens.wordpress.com/) or on twitter @eruditeogre.
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COVER ART
“Lost Citadel,” by Jonas De Ro
Jonas De Ro is a Belgian digital artist specializing in concept art and photography. He also has experience in animation, visual effects, and sound design. He has worked on commercials and music videos and is currently a concept artist for the upcoming science-fiction movie Jupiter Ascending, directed by the Wachowski siblings (The Matrix). Visit his website to view a selection of his works..
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2012 Firkin Press
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